Michael O’Dempsey’s relatives searching for answers 100 years after his brutal death
THE GOVERNMENT ISSUED A LETTER SAYING THE CHARGES ALLEGED AGAINST THE ENNISCORTHY SOLICITOR WERE WITHOUT ANY FOUNDATION
ONMARCH 15, 1921, towards the tail end of the Irish War of Independence, a volley of shots shattered the spring evening silence on the Main Street in Borris, Co Carlow. When the shooting stopped one man lay dead with another having sustained very serious injuries.
The person who died was local businessman, William Kennedy, while the man who was injured was his solicitor, Michael O’Dempsey, from Parkton, Enniscorthy. He died as a result of his injuries, two days later, on St Patrick’s Day.
Michael’s grand-niece, Margaret Franklin, spoke to this newspaper about her search for answers relating to his murder and her quest to ensure his tragic death is not forgotten in the annals of history.
Born in Enniscorthy, Margaret has been living in Athlone for over 40 years.
Her husband passed away almost four years ago and she recently bought an apartment in what used to be Michael O’Dempsey’s family home, at Parkton, in Enniscorthy.
She hoped to visit her great-uncle’s grave for the centenary of his death but obviously the lockdown will prevent her from doing that.
Margaret’s grandmother, Mary Franklin (nee: O’Dempsey) was the eldest of 11 children and sister to Michael O’Dempsey.
Margaret said her great-uncle ‘was a nationalist, but a Redmondite’, and that during the War of Independence he would not have taken part in the armed conflict.
However, she also said: ‘Neither would he have been a spy for the British’.
‘Growing up as a child in Enniscorthy, the shooting dead of my father’s uncle was never spoken about in the family circle,’ said Margaret.
‘Occasionally, I would overhear an adult making a passing reference to ‘poor Michael’, but I didn’t know who he was or why he was described as ‘poor’,’ she added.
Margaret said her mother eventually told her, quietly, that he had been shot dead ‘a long time ago’ but gave her no other details.
‘I quickly got the message that it was better not to ask any questions,’ said Margaret.
From when she was around 8-years-of-age, Margaret spent a lot of time with her Granny Franklin, Michael’s older sister, but she never mentioned the tragic death of her brother.
When Margaret was 16, her granny passed away and as her parents were going through some of her papers they found a document that shed some light on the possible motivation behind the shooting of her great-uncle.
It was a handwritten ‘personal memorandum’ document signed by him.
‘It described an incident that had occurred in January 1921, over two months before the fatal shooting,’ said Margaret.
Michael was abducted at gunpoint and taken to a remote cottage in the Blackstairs Mountains, where he was was interrogated, intimidated and warned to have no more to do with a case involving William Kennedy.
‘He chose to ignore the warning and continued to do his professional duty to his client,’ said Margaret.
‘For this, he paid the ultimate price,’ she added.
Michael O’Dempsey’s remains are buried in the old cemetery behind St Aidan’s Cathedral and for Margaret her quest is to have him remembered in the town he was very proud to be from.
The first time she saw his grave she was distressed to see the cross marking his final resting place was broken.
‘It seemed Enniscorthy had forgotten this man, who had died in such tragic circumstances,’ she said.
‘I had the cross repaired; I felt that was the least I could do in memory of my late great-uncle Michael,’ she added.
Aware of the emotive nature of the Irish War of Independence, Margaret commented: ‘Sadly, in times of conflict, there are always casualties on both sides, each one a tragedy for the family concerned. However, I want to know why a civilian, who had taken no part in the armed conflict, had been ambushed and shot dead, apparently because he had ignored the warning he had received in January.’
‘He was simply fulfilling his professional duty to represent his client in a civil case and it cost him his life,’ said Margaret.
Michael was only 35-years-of-age when he died. He was the eldest son of the family and enjoyed a brilliant academic career in Clongowes Wood College and then UCD.
He followed in the footsteps of his father, Thomas, and qualified as a solicitor, following which he joined his father’s practice in Enniscorthy.
The O’Dempsey family originally lived on Millpark Road but moved to Parkton, on Lymington Road, in 1890.
When Thomas O’Dempsey died, aged 65, in 1912, Michael took over the legal practice; he was legal advisor to the local urban and district councils at the time. Michael also had a branch office of his legal business in Borris, which he attended weekly.
It’s arguable that Michael O’Dempsey’s murder came about as a result of his own sincerity and professional integrity.
The circumstances that led to the fatal shooting were borne from William Kennedy refusing to close his shop on the day of the funeral of Lord Mayor of Cork, Terence MacSwiney.
That resulted in local Republicans placing a picket on his premises and intimidating his customers.
As a result he engaged Michael O’Dempsey to get a court order to remove the picket.
Michael’s ‘Personal Memorandum’ came to light almost by chance.
During an auction of furniture from Parkton in the 1940s a family had purchased a dressing table mirror and while a member of that family was carrying out a repair on it in 1985 the documents fell out from behind the glass.
It turned out to be early drafts of the memorandum which he wrote on January 4, 1921, the day after his abduction ordeal.
In it, Michael outlined how at 9.30 a.m. he started from ‘Graigue’ in a hired car owned by Pat Doyle, from Upper Main Street, ‘Graigue’.
He picked up his damaged Tamplin at Skeogue, two miles from Graigue, and towed it himself.
He stopped at Ballymurphy, where he got a spare tow-rope at Joyce’s, from ‘assistant McDonald’.
He wrote that he was ‘seen in Ballymurphy by various people, some no friends of mine, others clients and friends’.
About a mile from Ballymurphy, at about 10.30 a.m. in Coonogue townland, he and Pat Doyle were held up by two masked men.
Michael noted that one was tall and one was short and both had revolvers.
The taller of the two sent the other man on a message ‘to someone up the slope of Coonogue Wood on right-hand of road to Kiltealy’.
After around 20 minutes the small man came back and the taller person told Michael and Pat Doyle to go with him
‘Getting ready to start, an old man and woman with donkey-cart passed,’ stated Michael in the memorandum.
‘Old man, whom I do not know, gave me time of day, calling my name,’ he added.
‘Tall man stepped to him and said “mind, you have seen nothing”, both men got into Ford car, revolvers in hand all the time.’
They drove a mile-and-a-half along the road and turned up a laneway into a headland ‘by a dilapidated house, plainly in view of the road’, on the side of the Blackstairs Mountains.
They entered the kitchen of the house where Michael and the driver were searched by the tall man.
‘They were about to search my bag when I asked them to let me go through papers with them,’ stated Michael.
He noted that he did that because he knew what they wanted.
HE went through the papers until they reached ‘the original writ’ dated December 9, 1920, ‘Kings Bench No 10379, William P Kennedy vs Edward Dundon and nine others; with (2) Affidavit dated January 1, 1921, of Plaintiff as to service upon four of the Defendants’.
At that point Michael showed a remarkable degree of bravery telling the men: ‘These are what you want, and only at the point of the revolver I must let you take them.’
However, the men took the papers and he was told his bag would be searched again by ‘some gentlemen’ who were coming to deal with a charge against him.
According to Michael’s memorandum the tall man, having sent the other man on a message, went up to the loft where he read Michael’s papers.
At the point Michael got his bag and mixed up papers relating to the Kennedy case with other items in it to conceal them as best he could.
At around 2.30 p.m. Michael went out of the kitchen door to the pump and saw four or five masked men talking to the tall man.
He looked at the men as he was going back in but couldn’t tell who they were.
Shortly after, the tall man went into the house and told Michael he had to put a cover over his eyes while he was talking ‘to the man from Dublin’.
However, the man told him there was no need to be afraid and said: ‘We won’t put your back to the wall, we’ll let you off soon and we’re not going to shoot you.’
Michael told the man he wasn’t ‘much frightened’ and that he was prepared to be shot if needs be.
A short time later he heard some people move into the parlour. He got the impression there were three or four people and the tall man took his arm and led him to the parlour giving him ‘unnecessary consolation’ to not being afraid.
He heard someone talking to Pat Doyle outside and stated the man disguised their voices while talking to him.
Having confirmed that he was the solicitor ‘for a man named Kennedy’, Michael was then charged with ‘joining Kennedy in bringing the Black and Tans on the Republicans of Borris’.
Michael absolutely denied the charge but the questioner said they had ‘documentary evidence’ to prove the charge.
‘You are worse than Kennedy; you urged him on to do what he would not otherwise,’ alleged the man, to which Michael said: ‘I deny that also.’
The questioner then said: ‘We have found it all out among your papers. Your office in Enniscorthy was raided on Saturday, and we have got your instructions to Counsel. They are going to be referred to Dail Éireann. There is evidence enough to show you deserve to be hanged. You urged Kennedy to do this.’
Michael told the men he took instructions from Kennedy ‘as his solicitor’ and the questioner then alleged that he had advised Kennedy to give evidence implicating a man named Dundon.
‘You advised him to swear affidavits and if he swears them he will be shot,’ said the man questioning Michael, who replied that he had ‘the ordinary responsibility of a solicitor for his client’.
At that point another man went behind him and pressed something against the back of his neck although Michael stated it felt ‘more like a man’s thumb than a revolver barrel’.
The man said: ‘I’d give him this now in the back. He’s worse than the Black and Tans; he deserves it.’
However, Michael stated he felt no danger and couldn’t stop smiling.
He also stated there was ‘a great deal more bully-ragging
HE CHOSE TO IGNORE THE WARNING AND CONTINUED TO DO HIS PROFESSIONAL DUTY FOR HIS CLIENT AND PAI D THE ULTIMATE PRICE
from the same questioner’ which he felt was aimed at getting him to say something incriminating against himself.
‘If I am on trial for my life, is it quite fair to cross-heckle me?’ asked Michael, to which the man questioning him replied that it was.
It was then alleged that he had broken laws of the Irish Republic to which Michael replied: ‘No law was promulgated to the knowledge of the general public that cases could not be taken to the English courts where they were every day.’
He said that in Kennedy’s case his view was that Arthur Griffith’s statement regarding a holiday in respect of the dead Lord Mayor of Cork ‘was a request, not a mandatory law’.
Michael then added that if Kennedy had broken the law, ‘which was doubtful’, and Dáil Éireann had sanctioned penalties then ‘he should surely have been tried before punishment; not punished before trial’.
He was told that his case was under consideration of the ‘Competent Military Authority’, who was a General, who had come from Dublin to look into it.
Michael was also told that ‘whatever he deserved’ he would be let out ‘for the present’ if he gave an undertaking to have nothing more to do with the Kennedy case.
He was told they could shoot him any time, anywhere, even in his own home.
Again, displaying a remarkable level of bravery Michael said: ‘I might as well be shot as give such an undertaking.’
He also told the men that ‘if it was the law that a solicitor carrying out his duty to his client should be liable to the penalties they suggested it would not be sanctioned by any morality, human or otherwise.’
After a while the cover was taken off his eyes and he was left alone.
Shortly after that Michael and Pat Doyle were allowed leave and the tall man walked with them to the laneway where the cars had been moved to.
The tall men said: ‘I did my best to get you off. I suppose you won’t report any names as you don’t know me.’
Michael replied that he didn’t intend reporting it at all.
‘I had no personal animosity about the matter,’ he stated.
The tall man then shook hands with him.
Michael and Pat Doyle then made their way to Enniscorthy without further incident and arrived at 5.15 p.m.
There his typist told him that at 11.30 a.m. three men with revolvers had enquired about Kennedy’s papers.
They searched the office and were about the search the study when one of them said he had got what they wanted and then told the typist to inform Michael he would be shot if he had anything more to do with the case.
In his affidavit Michael stated he was disliked by three or four landless householders in Ballymurphy, by Seamus Lennon, TDE for Carlow, one of the defendants, and by others, but not all, of the ‘Sinn Féiners’, for refusing to sell them a farm at Kilmurrin for £480, and for having sold it to another party for £900.
In a 1998 edition of Carloviana, the journal of the Old Carlow Society, the late John Joyce also recalled the incident surrounding the Borris shootings.
He described William Kennedy (44) as being an unmarried qualified pharmaceutical chemist who had worked in England for some years before returning to Borris to carry on in business.
In his piece Mr Joyce said that one of the circumstances which had a bearing on the tragedy was a rivalry that developed between William Kennedy and a neighbour over a contract for carrying the mail between Borris and Dublin.
Kennedy won the contract but ill-feeling developed between the two parties over the matter and the animosity between the two was compounded by the men’s different political outlooks.
Where Kennedy came from a Redmondite background the other man was a supporter of the Republican movement.
Mr Joyce noted that the funeral of Terence MacSwiney, on Friday, October 9, 1920, was crucial to the tragic events in Borris.
He died on the 75th day of his hunger strike at Brixton Prison and after his death Acting President of the Republic, Arthur Griffith, called for a national day or mourning with businesses closing on the day of the funeral as a mark of respect.
Many businesses closed but in Borris the message to close was relayed to business owners by members of the local IRA company.
However, the person who visited William Kennedy’s premises was the young son of Kennedy’s business rival and with him not being one to take orders about his business from any outsider, Kennedy was very unlikely to pay heed to orders from the son of one of his main rivals and he kept his business open on the day of the funeral.
FOLLOWING the funeral Kennedy became the target of increased hostility from Republican quarters and his business was boycotted. He consulted with Michael O’Dempsey and after receiving advice from Counsel proceeded to seek an injunction in the High Court against 10 local men who were all known to have Republican connections.
The writs in the case were issued on December 9, 1920, and they were served on the defendants between December 11 and 15, that year.
Six of the writs were served by Michael O’Dempsey and the remaining four by Kennedy himself.
Over the Christmas period a meeting was organised by Dr Patrick Reid, medical officer for Borris Dispensary District, between three of the named defendants and William Kennedy.
He managed to broker an agreement between the parties for a cessation of hostilities however, before December ended one of the named defendants, Edward Hogan, commenced an action in the High Court against William Kennedy and on January 1, 1921, Michael O’Dempsey wrote to his Dublin agents instructing them to enter a defence in the case.
However, on January 3, he had to repeat those instructions by telegram because he found out his original letter had been raided.
It was later that morning that he was abducted and brought to the house on the Blackstairs Mountains.
Three days after his abduction a party of Auxiliaries raided the homes of four of the 10 defendants in the Kennedy case.
They were accompanied by William Kennedy and the fact he was with them could well have been a move that effectively sealed his fate, and that of Michael O’Dempsey.
Three of the men, Edward Dundon, Patrick Hogan, and John Murphy were brought to Woodstock, in Inistioge, by the Auxiliaries and were held for three weeks before being released on January 27.
In the interim Michael took steps to reactivate the legal proceedings and on January 28, 1921, was in a position to serve copy writs on all of the 10 defendants, other than Edward Hogan, who had already entered a defence against the original writ.
As the date of the hearing drew near, on March 15, O’Dempsey and Kennedy attended the Carlow assizes in relation to a land dispute following which they returned to Borris.
After dinner they went for a walk along the Main Street in Borris.
At about 9 p.m. as the two were returning to Kennedy’s premises a barrage of shots rang out from behind a wall on the opposite side of the road to where they were.
Kennedy, apparently made a dash for the door but was hit by a volley of bullets and fell to the ground.
According to Mr Joyce in his journal article, Michael O’Dempsey ‘almost reached the door before collapsing on the footpath, badly wounded in the head and body’.
Kennedy died at the scene and Michael was moved into a room in the building near where he fell.
He was attended to by a priest and a doctor but his injuries were very severe. However, it’s believed he expressed forgiveness to his assailants before passing away at 3 p.m. on St Patrick’s Day.
Michael’s mother attempted to have her son’s name cleared in the immediate aftermath of his death and corresponded with the Government over the matter.
She eventually received a letter from Cathal Brugha, Minister for Defence, in which he said the Government was convinced the charges against her son were without foundation.
In February, 1922, Michael O’Dempsey’s mother was awarded £2,500 compensation under the Criminal Injuries Act for the death of her son.